A Critical Analysis Of St. Augustine's Confessions

In St. Augustine’s Confessions, Augustine details his life’s journey up to the point of conversion. Along the way he navigates the world largely by imitating others which in some instances brings him closer to conversion while in others leads him further from God. Augustine is seen struggling over whom to trust as a model of imitation, and initially relies on his intelligence in the form of logic to distinguish between good and bad models. He identified bad models by exposing contradictions, or by noticing that they are pretending to be something they are not. Good models, since they are close to god will not exhibit any contradiction or pretend to be something they are not. Although intelligence is useful to Augustine in his struggle to distinguish

It takes him some time, but he eventually uses his intelligence to distinguish between good and bad models for imitation is by engaging in debate and finding contradictions in his models’ arguments and values. In one instance Augustine is studying under a group of superiors and realizes that “They would be covered in embarrassment if, in describing their own actions in which they had not behaved badly, they were caught using a barbarism or a solecism of speech. But if they described their lusts in a rich vocabulary of well constructed prose with a copious and ornate style, they received praise and congratulated themselves” (20). These men are more concerned with image than true virtue, and it shows in their arguments. Augustine is able to identify the contradiction in these men in respect to what they find shameful, and thus concludes that they are not good models of imitation because their morals are embedded with falsehood. This is a case where intelligence by itself is enough to identify a bad model. Augustine did not need to use God as a standard to recognize that something was off in their arguments and it was his logic that caused him to reject their ideas and seek a different subject of